As the conservative talk “news” beats the drums for war with Iran and Bush ratchets up the war propaganda Senator Barack Obama is prepared to stand in their way. Late yesterday Obama introduced a resolution that denies Bush the authorization needed to use military force on Iran. Obama has been very clear in his stand against using military force on Iran and against the Iraq war from the beginning and this resolution only strengthens his position.

It will be interesting to see how this resolution impacts his poll numbers against Hillary Clinton. Clinton, and Chris Dodd, were among 28 other Senators who recently signed a letter to President Bush advising him that he had no authority to use force on Iran (which Obama declined to sign). Despite this small measure Clinton has recently drawn fire from progressives for supporting the Kyl-Lieberman amendment which many feel is enough to grant Bush the authority to bomb Iran.

Personally I think that this is a good move by Obama. Not only for the political capital it will gain him, but also for national security. After being stuck in Iraq the United States Military is broken. By all accounts we simply do not have the troops necessary to continue our operations in Iraq past the Spring of 2008. In addition to Iraq we also have troops in Afghanistan who have been seeing increased fighting. The last thing we need right now is to try to take on another country, we can’t handle the two we have now.

We are finally starting to see some signs of success in Iraq, much like we were having fighting the terrorists in Afghanistan before our President got bored and decided to do something else for a while. Well, now like a spoiled child who never finishes anything Bush is starting to get bored with Iraq, maybe not enough explosions to keep him interested, and he’s starting to look for something new to play with. We need to wrap up what we started before we even think about getting entrenched in another long protracted war of choice.

What our President needs to do instead of stomping around throwing temper tantrums about what Congress is doing is take care of his job. Namely that is to act like a big boy and start engaging these countries and groups in some diplomacy. I applaud Senator Obama for taking this step to reign in this administration, I only wish that Bush had not shown so many times that he is more than willing to ignore the law and the Constitution when it suits him. Maybe then I would have more hope that this resolution could have an impact.

~ William ~

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